As contemporary society progresses, people spend Less time preparing and consuming meals. Fast food, such as food provided by drive through chain restaurants, provides one option for those who want their meal ready for consumption in a short time; however, many people do not desire fast food or cannot eat it, due to its lack of nutrition and in particular, its high calorie, salt, and fat content.
Prepared foods, such as those sold in supermarkets, take-out establishments, and the like, while appearing to be home cooked, are typically expensive. Additionally, like fast food, many of these prepared foods tack nutritional value, and are usually high in calories, salt, and fat. Accordingly, both fast food and prepared foods do not appeal to many consumers.
Consumers have found some suitability in frozen meals and prepackaged meals, such as those that can be heated in a microwave oven; however, these frozen meals are typically provided with mixed contents. Accordingly, when cooked or reheated, some of the contents may be undercooked, while some of the contents may be overcooked. Similarly, room temperature prepackaged meals may suffer partial degradation and discoloration of the components while in storage, and when heated in a microwave oven, the components may cook unevenly.
Typically, shelf stable, frozen, and/or refrigerated food products have a variety of undesirable attributes. Food products may combine differing types of food items (i.e., starches, sauces, proteins, vegetables, and/or fruits) together for manufacturing, processing, and/or cooking. Solid food items include starches, proteins, vegetables, and/or fruits. This is list is not meant to be restrictive. It is contemplated that other food items that are not viscous may be utilized without departing from the scope and intent of the disclosure. However, different types of food items require different freezing, processing, and/or cooking times. Over processing food items may cause negative effects on color, flavor, and texture. Therefore, these current food products have tow quality flavor and preparing them turns their components into a stew-like mixture.
Consumers desire tasty, high quality, convenient, and economical meals and snacks that are plateable. Plateability allows the consumer to choose between different food items that are cooked separately and then provided to the consumer for plating. Moreover, plateability allows the food items to be plated in a visually appealing manner. Plateability also allows the consumer to selectively mix food items. When serving gravy some individuals may want the gravy on the side for dipping, some may want the gravy on top of their food items, and others may not want gravy at all. A meal that is plateable allows an individual to decide how to serve the food items and/or sauces to his or her liking and allows consumers such as families and the commercial food service industry to provide these choices to individuals, even when serving more than one person.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide cookable packaged food products that are high in quality, plateable, convenient, and economical, as well as a cooking apparatus for making such a food product.